fandomtownies | Beach, Sunday Evening

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Beach, Sunday Evening

It was almost dark, and Jack knew that meant he should be home before somebody got worried.

But, he realized, there was no one in town he could worry. Excited by this, he wandered down to the beach and set himself the task of constructing the tallest sandcastle he could manage. He even took off his sandals and waded in to collect shells.

The best part, of course, would be after the sandcastle was built. Then he could bring it down.

[OOC: Open!]

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Alice had spent most of the weekend in her room, playing with Dinah, and then moving her meager possessions from her room down to her new cabin, which took far less time than coaxing Dinah out from under the bed. But considerably more time than it might have a few months ago, when her worldly possessions were largely the cat and a spare dress.

The end result was that she had not realized yet that the adults of the island were small-sized, for the weekend.

And so when Alice took a walk later, watching the waves on the beach, and spied a young boy building sand castles, she thought he was perhaps a new resident, and not, say, one of her teachers.

"Good evening," she smiled, stopping by his architecture. "That's a lovely castle, you know."

Somehow it never seemed rude to introduce one's self abruptly to children.

Jack nodded seriously, sticking a shell in at the top of a turret. "I wanna make it really good," he informed the girl. "You can help."

"Could I?" Alice smiled, kneeling down next to the boy. Grateful, really, that she'd given over to modern styles, as sand brushed free of jeans far easier than pinafores. "I promise to do my best. Who lives in this castle, then?"

"I do," Jack decided. "Just me, an' nobody else can come in unless I say they can, and then they have to do whatever I say."

His eyes flickered over Alice, more interested. "I know you!"

"I would wonder that they'd stay, if they were subject to your rule in such a manner," Alice teased, lightly. She looked over at the boy, trying to place him. "Do you? Have I forgotten my manners already? Mother would scold me for not curtsying, you know."

"They'd have to like it or they'd leave," the boy insisted, delicately scraping away sand to make a moat. "What's curtsying?"

Edited 2008-08-04 01:36 (UTC)

Well, that required a proper demonstration. Alice jumped to her feet and stood, heels together. "You stand like this," she said, "and then you hold out your skirt -- although I haven't one on at the moment -- and you bow, carefully, moving one foot behind you, like so. And you say, 'it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.' Even if the person seems very rude or smells unpleasant and you're not pleased to make the acquaintance at all."

She mimed a slow, deliberate curtsy before sitting again. "Ladies curtsy, and gentlemen bow."

"Issa pleasure to make your acquaintance," Jack dutifully repeated, rising and dipping a careful bow. "Even though I already met you. In class."

"Very nicely done," she smiled. "You'll have to forgive my memory, then, as I fear it's faulty. And this is where proper society is helpful, as most people will claim not to mind even if they're quite horribly offended. Strange, but true. Which class do we share?"

Had one of her classmates regressed to a child's age, or was he one of the teacher's children who had come in on a day when she wasn't paying sufficient attention?

"Silly!," Jack said, not sounding offended. "The living on your own class. I'm Jack an' they let me teach it and last week you made chilly." He frowned. "You don' call me my right name 'cause it's a secret."

This was new, even for Alice. And that was rather saying something.

"I see," she said, and tried to wrap her mind around that. "Have you perhaps been eating mushrooms?"

They'd only made her taller, not older, but perhaps Fandom grew them differently.

Jack looked confused. "Nooo, those are vegetables," he told her. "Alls I had today was coffee an' chips an' Oreos."

"Am I sposta eat mushrooms?"

"They can help when one is the wrong size entirely," Alice said cheerfully. "But it has to be the right mushroom. And some mushrooms are poisonous, so it isn't something one wants to go testing rashly."

She considered her teacher for a few moments. "Turtle's name is a secret, as well. She claims to be Alice when it suits her. I don't mind, I said I'd share."

"So I won't eat mushrooms," Jack decided, and went back to mounding up sand. After a second, he added, "Turtle told me that a long long long time ago, an' she wouldn't say her real name but I wouldn't say mine so it was okay." He frowned. "I don't gotta share Tyler or Jack with anybody, do I?"

"Mine's Alice, all of the time, except when I'm a Queen," she said, letting some of the sand pour through her fingers. "Then I'm Queen Alice, which is really the same but sounds far more impressive. I think sharing names is entirely up to you. Do you keep different names for different occasions?"

She knew him as Tyler -- although it would be terribly forward to refer to him as such -- but perhaps he used Jack when he'd like, around others.

"Do you have a throne an' a crown an' everything when you're a queen?" Jack asked, impressed.

He squirmed, thinking about her question. "I forget," was his final answer, then, dragging out one of the larger words he knew: "It's complicacated." Which was probably the extent of the most explanation he could manage, split personalities being a bit beyond his grasp just then.

"I did," she smiled. "And a door that said QUEEN ALICE over it, which I thought was rather nice. I wish I could have taken the sign with me. I wonder if it's still there."

She shrugged, reaching to shape one of the towers closer to her. "I'm afraid that's rather complicated, as well. It seems as though one should be able to avoid that sort of thing, when one is Queen. Point the scepter and announce, 'No more of that, thank you very much.'"

She was using a lot of words, and Jack didn't quite understand. "So what's the point of being queen if you can't make stuff happen?" he asked. "See, when I build my castle, nothin's gonna happen 'less I want it to."

"You can," Alice said calmly. "You can order around your subjects all you like. The problem is that there are other queens, and they might have other plans."

"Can't you send your knights to get rid of the other queens?" Jack asked.

"One can, if the knights remain loyal," Alice agreed. She smiled, somewhat cruelly. "That is when it becomes handy for a Queen to know how to wield a knife."

Jack decided Alice was about the coolest big girl ever at that point. "Do you have a knife?" he demanded. "Show me!"

"I do, but I don't," Alice sighed, and none of her disappointment was put upon for her young companion, either. "It's in that weapons locker. My Vorpal Blade, sitting and rusting. Isn't that a wretched thought?"

That was a wretched thought.

"Oh. Is it in time out?" Jack knew about time outs. Sometimes his favorite toys ended up in there and it was no fun at all.

Robin and a troupe of puppies came scampering down to the beach, because she wanted to play in the sand.

She liked sandcastles. Go figure.

"Hi!" she yelled at the boy, because she might as well let him know she was there. "Are you making a sandcastle inna sand?"

"Uh-huh!" Jack told her. "It's gonna be the best sandcastle ever and you can help if you want and are those doggies all yours?"

"Uh huh! There's 'nother one but he belongs to Benny and Benny talks like a grandma so that doggie isn't as good as mine," she assured him. "This is Peanut, Pickles, Sprinkles, D'rito, Reesies, and Popcorn!"

"How come they all got food names?" Jack asked, holding out a sandy hand for the puppies to sniff. "This boy in my house gots a dog, too, but he's big."

He was, if you were five.

"'Cause," she said, "those're their names. I'm named after a bird." She held out her arms like wings, in case he didn't know what a bird was.

The puppies, meanwhile, crowded closer to sniff at his wee hand.

"I'm not named after nothin'," Jack told her. "What's your name, Crow?" He giggled because he thought that was clever.

There was some happy flailing and giggling as the puppies licked at his hand, and he patted a few on the head.

She made a face at him. "Nuh uh. Robin! They're pretty and they're red and blue. Crows're gross."

"Robins eat worms," Jack told her, making a face back.

"You eat worms!" she decided.

"Nuh-uh, you do!" Jack declared, being the brilliant conversationalist that he was. "You're the one whose name is a birdy."

Edited 2008-08-04 02:22 (UTC)

"So? You're the one whose name is nothing!" she pointed out.

Jack rolled his eyes in an exaggerated display of impatience. "My name's not nothin'!" he insisted. "It's Jack."

"Do you got a beanstalk?" she asked, giggling.

"I do!" Jack insisted, bouncing up from the sand. "It's THIS BIG!" He held his hands over his head to demonstrate.

He was, of course, completely lying.

"Oooh!" Robin wasn't sure if she believed that. "Did you fall down a hill?"

Jack didn't actually get that reference. "Huh? No."

"So do you fly?"

"Sometimes," she said cryptically.

One time she went in an airplane!

Jack's eyes got wide. "That is so cool."

She was probably lying, but so what?

"I know," Robin preened. "I'm awesome."

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Beach, Sunday Evening

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